English using Newspapers: Newspapers and magazines are required in all classrooms, including those for beginners. Newspapers can be used in the classroom in a variety of ways, from simple reading exercises to more complex writing and answering tasks. Here you will find suggestions for using newspapers in the classroom, organised by linguistic goals.
Read
Simple to understand: Students should read and discuss an article.
Request that students locate articles from various countries on a global topic. Students should compare and contrast how news is reported in different countries.
Vocabulary
Concentrate on word forms with coloured pens. Instruct students to encircle different forms of a word in an article, such as worth, worthlessness, and so on.
Instruct students to look for words of various types, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
Make a mind map of an article that uses vocabulary to connect ideas.
Pay attention to words that are related to specific ideas. For instance, instruct students to circle finance-related verbs. Allow students to compare and contrast the differences between these words in groups.
Grammar
English Using Newspaper
Discuss the use of the present, which is ideal for recent events affecting the present moment, with a focus on shortened headlines that use the past participle, such as. The company ABC and XYZ Merger has been completed, and the Senate Bill has been approved.
To emphasise grammar points, use coloured pens. For instance, if you are studying verbs that use the gerund or infinitive, have students highlight these combinations with one colour for gerund and another colour for infinitives. Another option is for students to use different colours to highlight different tenses.
Make a photocopy of a newspaper article. Highlight important grammar elements that you want students to fill in the blanks with. Make all auxiliary bonds white, for example, and ask students to fill them out.
Speak
Divide students into groups and read a short article. Students should then write questions based on that article and then share articles with another group asking questions. Once the groups have answered the questions, take the students to couples, one from each group, and have them discuss their answers.
Ads in focus. How do the ads throw up their products? What messages are they trying to send?
Pronunciation / Listening
English Using Newspaper
Assign students the task of preparing two paragraphs from a newspaper article. First, students should read all of the passage’s substantive words. Then, have students practise reading the sentences while focusing on the correct intonation of the sentence and content words. Finally, students read aloud to themselves and ask simple comprehension questions.
Concentrate on one or two IPA symbols by using the fewest possible pairs. Request that students emphasise the example of each phonemes that they practise. For example, by searching for representative words with each phoneme, students can compare and contrast the phonemes for the short/I/tone and the longer ‘ee’ of/i/.
Use a message that includes a transcript. Begin by having students listen to a message. Then, ask questions about the story’s main points. Finally, instruct students to listen while reading the transcript. Then there will be a discussion.
To write
Students should write brief summaries of the messages they read.
Request that students write their own newspaper article for a school or class newspaper. Some students can conduct interviews, while others can take photographs. Alternatively, you could use the same concept to create a class blog.
Students at lower levels can write descriptive sentences using photos, charts, images, and so on. To practise related vocabulary, these can be simple sentences that describe what someone is wearing. Advanced students can write about the “backstory” of photos, such as why a person was in the situation depicted in a photograph.
